Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Je Suis Charlie

I don't know that I'd have been much of a fan of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, and of their brand of humor. I prefer respectful humor to its mocking style.

But I'm so angry about the killings in Paris today. I want to rant against the arrogant ignorance that is so self-righteous about its point of view that it would kill innocents in defense of its pitiful sense of honor.

What an ugly sense of God one must have, to slaughter while proclaiming that God is Good. This has nothing to do with Islam. Whether one calls oneself Christian, Moslem, Jew, or by any other designation, if the highest that a person's God calls them to is random and symbolic slaughter, that person's God is no more than a reflection of that person's own inadequacy and fear.

I don't order my life around religious concepts. But I value the notion of God, as representing a basic and essential goodness in creation, as representing our longing and desire to be bigger and better and more loving than we are. I find it a perversion of the very concept of God, to wrap it around our baggage of longing, need, loss and our fear, and use it as a weapon.

I hope that the essence of Love - which, so far as I can determine, is the motivating power is all true faith - will seep in and calm my own vengeful, angry heart ... and the hearts of all of us misguided fools, who do so much that is hateful in God's name.

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